This review provides in-depth insight into the structural engineering of PDA-based materials to enhance their responsive feature and the use of them in construction of PDA-based stimuli-responsive smart materials.

Digital polymers with precisely ordered units acting as the coded 0- or 1-bit, are introduced as a promising option for molecular data storage. However, the pursuit of better performance in terms of high storage capacity and useful functions never stops. Herein, we propose a concept of an information-coded 2D digital dendrimer. The divergent growth via thiol-maleimide Michael coupling allows precise arrangements of the 0- and 1-bits in the uniform dendrimers. A protocol for calculating the storage capacity of non-linear binary digital dendrimer is established based on data matrix barcode, generated by the tandem mass spectrometry decoding and encryption. Furthermore, the generated data matrix barcode can be read by a common hand-held device to cater the applications such as item identification, traceability and anticouterfeiting purpose. This work demonstrates the high data storage capacity of a uniform dendrimer and uncovers good opportunities for the digital polymers.

Due to their unique properties, selenium-containing polymers have become one of the research focuses of polymer materials in recent years. First, selenium can transform among various states of selenoxide, selenone, and selenium free radicals, and then be restored under these conditions, which endows these polymers with multiresponsive behaviors, including responses to redox changes, light, radiation, etc. Second, these polymers show characteristic properties. Selenium-containing polymers exhibit unique multiple optical–electrical characteristics, including high photoconductivity, anisotropic thermoconductivity, high piezoelectric and thermoelectric responses, and a high refractive index. Based on these various properties, selenium-containing polymers are regarded as excellent functional polymer materials. Therefore, it is meaningful to synthesize selenium-containing polymers with various structures. This paper principally gives a summary of the organic reactions of organoselenium compounds and reviews the research on the synthesis of selenium-containing polymers via different methods, such as the use of selenium-containing monomers and their polymerization, selenium-containing initiators for polymerization, selenium-containing mediators for controlled polymerization and selenium-containing molecules for the postmodification of polymers. Moreover, applications of selenium-containing polymers are described, including their use as intrinsic high refractive index polymeric materials, oxidative- and reductive-responsive materials, dynamic exchanging polymers, selective metal adsorbents, and catalysts.